Tuesday, November 6, 2007

So I'm not sure if we should thank the good folks at Cold Hard Football Facts or not. They linked us on their main page yesterday ("Funny Colts blogger struggles with cycle of rage") and linked it to 88 reasons to hate the Patriots. That was really cool of them, but it also flooded our inbox with insane emails. Apparently, I have to explain myself using very small words so some people can understand me: We are joking. It's called hu-mor. Yeah, we really do hate the Pats, but seriously folks, we are joking around. This site is the result of two brothers publishing the kind of stuff that we email and IM to each other every day anyway. We are two guys sitting around laughing, and want the rest of you to be in on the joke. Not everyone gets that; they took 88 Reasons as some kind of cultural manifesto.

The email we received fell into three categories:

1. So profane and vile that it sort of made me sick that people could be so twisted. There was actual evil involved in some of these emails.

2. Furious that we dared to make fun of Bill Belichick's son-Seriously. I actually felt bad about the one about Tom Brady's baby, and I actually slightly adjusted the wording this morning because I felt it was a tad harsh toward a kid who hasn't even had the chance to be annoying on his own yet and will probably grow up to hate his dad as much as the rest of us. But come on. Joking about Bill's annoying kid (who does have a drug charge against him) is not the end of the world. Every one of the dude's buddies must have emailed us calling us puritanical and cruel and what not. Whatever, it was a joke, and we laughed about it, and we aren't apologizing for it.

3. People who thought the article was hilarious and have a sense of humor. I thank you both.

Here are some of the best emails of the day:

Tim says: I appreciate the vigor with which you support your Football club, but don't you guys have more important things to do with your time out there in Indiana? Like husking corn for instance? I hope northeastern teams continue to blow out your pathetic franchise and beat you at the very game with which you are obsessed. The Northeast is the best part of this country and always will be. Clinging to your pathetic little football team won't change that. The funny thing is, while you guys are living and dying by the Colts, football is just a simple form of entertainment here in the northeast and always will be. I just find it to be so amusing that your area of the country obsesses to no end over football and you can't even beat the Northeast, an area of the country that could care less about football. Face the facts, whatever you do, we can do better. It's always been that way and it's not going to change. Have fun milking your cows tomorrow morning.

Sincerely, A proud upstate new yorker

Dude, what a great email! Did you work on that all day? I couldn't have done a better job of mocking the arrogance of the north east myself! Classic performance! Not to mention the irony involved in going to the trouble of emailing someone from the midwest to complain about how much spare time WE have out here. Sooooo funny. Man, you should write professionally, because you are a gosh darn hoot! thanks for reading!

Next we have William who quite fairly points out that perhaps our criticism of a Pats fan site was self inflicted: Um, don't go to Patriot sites, dude. Crazy thought, but if it is ilovethePatriots.com, um maybe you won't like it. Just saying.

Too true, my friend. All too true. We had that coming.

Sean writes: You're list on why you hate the Pats was really cute. Looks like the fans are just like the players, whiny little b*****. Why don't you spew some venom on your choker quarterback who has let his fans down like what, 20 times in big games?? You guys pay good money for tickets to see those choker losers and they reward you guys with sub-par play time and time again. Dungy gets fired from Tampa Bay and what happens the next year? Manning leaves Tennessee and what happens the next year? I never understand why you guys support your brides-maid team year in and year out. We'll see your loser team in Foxboro in January and beat them yet AGAIN.

Here's my list on why i hate the Colts:

1. They are a bunch of losers with loser fans.Manning chokes YET AGAIN!!LEWSERS!!

At first I thought Sean was being satirical as well. I wrote to thank him for hilariously mocking the Pats fans who blame Manning for everything because apparently they think football is a game played by two men at a time, and Manning is a choker because he threw two perfect TDs that his wideouts dropped and was blindsided on consecutive possessions by a line that decided to imitate a sieve. Incredibly, as it turns out Sean was serious! I then chided him for his spelling. He replies (and I'm serious):That's a Jim Carrey line from Ace Ventura, Einstein. The LEW is accented. Get it?

Oh I'm sorry, Sean. I stand corrected. It was my mistake to think that we were living in 2007 and to expect a reference from this century (or at least from a movie classic enough to be worth quoting a dozen years later). You've done it Sean! Your wit and wisdom have bested me.

A couple of quick notes: 18 Plays will be up late tonight or tomorrow morning. Also, Pats fans keep commenting on old posts from the weekend, but oddly enough no one has anything to say about "Let me be very clear." Huh. Curious.

Classic. Thanks Tim. "...you can't even beat the Northeast...we can do better. It's always been that way and it's not going to change." Based on the nature of the article he is responding to, I am also assuming by "northeast" he means the Patriots and not the Bills, Giants, Jets, Eagles, Ravens or Redskins. If he is refering to all those teams as a collective whole, then how does this argument even work? And always huh? He must mean except for the Super Bowl we won and the last three meetings before Sunday's game.

I have never seen fans so bitter after a win. I love how all these Colts fans can laugh and have fun with this stuff, whereas these Patriot fans seem to devote all their time and energy into proving a point that either doesn't need to be made or doesn't matter. It sure seems like Patriot football is a lot more than "a simple form of entertainment" to Tim, but I could be wrong. Maybe he goes well out of his way to blog about minature golf too. Either way, congrats on the win Sunday and I can't wait to see you again in January.

I just realized some wording in there sounds screwy since I somehow deleted the part of the sentence that said "I am assuming he is refering to football..." None the less, can we please see some more Pat-fan responses?

I've been a Pats fan all my life. You have to understand that nearly half of the current fanbase has been with the team since either 1993 (Parcells) or 2001 (Super Bowl) and were previously Niners/Cowboys/Packers fans living in New England.

That's where those e-mails are coming from.

Those are the same people who booed Bledsoe when he came back and only know Craig James as a NCAA analyst.

However, it's a tad ironic reading responses disparaging the intelligence of people living in the higher education capital of the world. Choose your targets more wisely, Colts fans.

Anyhow, nice blog and congratulations on beating the spread last Sunday! It must have felt like Super Bowl XLI all over again.

Listen patriots crazies. It was a great game, your guys played better at the end to win. Kinda like the Championship last year.

Let me add that we really do feel your pain of loosing last year with sub-par receivers. Not having your #1 and #3 receivers doesn't help the old offense at all.

It'll be a great game if we can meet in the championship game again this year with a healthy team. Being down 6 starters just puts a damper on this great rivalry and I hope that BOTH teams are good and healthy for a rematch.

I wouldn't go nuts about this win(might want to shore up that *ahem* veteran run stopping crew), but the patriots played good. Now they are 1-3 in the last 4 games vs Indy.

Yeah, the thing about about mocking Pats fans intellegence is that they earned it. There may be a lot of amazing schools in New England, but there are a whole lot of bean eaters that'll never see the inside of MIT or Harvard. Most of those guys wrote me in the last 24 hours.

It's actually the third time now in the short history of 18to88.com. It makes me wonder why they don't have anything better to do than read us. Then again we read them, so what's that tell ya'? In all seriousness, it's always nice when you get linked by other sites. It helps people find you. So I appriciate it.